Calum McGowan
History WIP Stories, little Magpie. All the world is made with them: sad ones, happy ones. Stories that make your blood boil, and stories that make you piss your pants. Some are boring; some are exciting. As for mine, I'll let you decide. I was born as Calum McGowan to my parents Rosey and James McGowan. Tis my belief that they were Fianna kinfolk, since they were calm, attentive parents and around even when Luna's full arse graced the skies. We lived in the outskirts of Edinburgh, Scotland, where I played and learned and fell in love and learned of scorn. But that will come later. Right now, I suppose I should start when I was just a lad. Much of my early life is characterized by church of all things. We attended a small congregation which had a strange meld of Catholicism Lite and Earth-Worship practices: that is, we had a lot of ritual, a lot of standing and sitting, passages in Latin, but we were not so much with the guilt, and it was reiterated that God took many forms, including the world outside the cities. Looking back now, I can see they were setting me up for accepting the Triat, while keeping my social life at school more or less stable. It was, partly, a success. I was very passionate about church and the things they taught. If you weren't aware, Catholicism innae the biggest religion in Scotland: the Church of Scotland is -- go figure. The Kirk, as 'tis called, is presbyterian, and thus Protestant, which my limited young mind saw as heresy and bullocks: after all, anyone can see God--that's Gaia, of course--resides in Nature. Well either way, I was fired up good. I got into many fights in school -- not all of them over religion, of course, but that earned me a lot of rough-housing on its own. The more I fought, the more I became firmly entrenched in what I thought was right. Eventually my parents pulled me out of school and church, and at my protests, they told me to worship my own way, and that God wouldn't mind as long as I didn't forget Him. Well, that di'n't sit right with me. But they were my parents and my Da was a right demon when he was angered -- like a good Fiann! -- so I kept my tongue and set about my own worship. I tried to replicate the rituals from Church, like communion and what, but it didn't seem the same, so I made my own. Or, that's not quite right: I really just tapped into what seemed to be what God wanted. I was satisfied. As my parents homeschooled me, they started preparin' my brain for first change. Every night I heard more fanciful bedtime stories about werewolves, and their hierarchy and how they fought against the Devil for Mother Nature and God. I was enthralled, of course. What young lad doesn't want to fight legions of evil and come out on top? I started creating my own names for myself, eating pepperoni sandwiches and writing awkward stories about Strong-Wolf the Bard. The occupations I desired throughout life changed at that point. Until then it had been (in order of appearance) astronaut, veterinarian, Braveheart, writer, writer, architect, writer, singer/songwriter, Bard (which is how I knew the Galliard auspice, in these stories). My parents seemed to find it amusing, and I suppose it probably was, but me? I was being very serious. I wanted to be a werewolf when I grew up. My parents teased me about it, but lookin' back, I think they were also proud. Anywho, I hit fourteen, and by that point I'd long stopped performin' daily rituals for God and Mother Nature, but I still thought about 'em all the time. I found me a girl I liked, and boy did she have the light of th' stars in her eyes. Of course that weren't what was on my mind at the time, though I did think oh so passionately about her and her beauty, and I got what plenty o' I wanted. Then I got what neither of us expected: a few months later, she told me she had my babe in her belly. I knew the spark of God was in that baby, and my spark as well, and so I ordered her not to get rid of it. But she was young, only sixteen, and I was younger, though I looked sixteen and never corrected her as to my age, and of course she resented me for my orders. I couldn't stand the thought of my little boy being snuffed out for no good reason. I'' could take care of him just fine, and I was sure she could too. And anyways, I was deeply, madly in love with her. A part of me still is, I'm sure, but she never loved me. She went off and killed him. I was so angry at her! I couldn't handle seeing her again, without thinking of my baby boy that never was. And so it went. My parents were getting worried about something. They told me it were nothing, but whatever it was drove us out of Scotland. Out of Europe altogether. We left for America. I got along even worse there, unless I kept my big trap shut. When I was just a wee one, I was quite small indeed. Shorter, scrawnier than most of my peers. But when I hit puberty, it was like a magic hormone cocktail of growth. I was suddenly six-foot tall, growing a scratchy beard, and feeling like sex was the greatest need on Earth. A few months later, I was four inches taller and had the biggest face-monster of all my peers. It felt manly. And oh so awkward. I told you part of what happened then, already, but after that, I had another girl. Sweet, beautiful, the love of my life. But it took only a few months before she left my heart beating on the pavement. These American girls, they were vicious. That was the first time I got really well and truly boozed up, as they say. I took a liking right away. As time wore on, I could tell my accent was thinning, but let me tell you a secret: I held onto it on purpose. Y'know why? Girls ''love an accent. It's like a magic aphrodisiac. That's part of why I still have it today. The other part is holdin' on to my heritage, y'ken? Well, anyways, I started meetin' new family, y'ken. That's 'family' with a capital 'F,' y'get my meaning? So off I went, meeting all these uncles and aunts I never knew I had. Who'da thought that a proud Scottish family would have a passel of relatives in California? Well, twas the Sept of the Faerie Ring. They intended to get to me, afore I changed in public. But unfortunately they missed me. I was busy with the love of my life, Gizelle, whom I'd met at the arcade a few weeks earlier. Oh, Gizelle...my beautiful Gizelle! We could have lived the good life together... ...Ah, sorry about that. I still get a little misty eyed. We were making sweet love, and I got a little...excited. When I woke up I was covered in my sweet Gizelle, and not in the good way, mind you. I was told later my kinfetch had run to find my family but had been waylaid by a distillery on the way. It figures, doesn't it? They found the wee stag drunk on the building's steps before it made some haphazard attempt at a Galliard symbol and vanished. Somehow, they found me, in the crummy motel I'd picked for the occasion with my meager allowance, naked and in shock. The family did a good job of passing it on to their PR kin that it was the job of a masked killer. I think they blamed it on some guy working for the Wyrm, so he got what was coming to him. I'm not entirely clear on the details. In the meantime, though, my heart was broken. I was muddled, my girl was dead, and now I couldn't even see my parents. My Family told me all those stories were real. It was all real, and I really was a Bard--a Galliard. Once I got over the abject horror, I was stunned. My dream--or one of them, anyways--had come true, and without any effort on my part. The stories made for an easy transition to cubhood, and when I was well inundated, they introduced me to other cubs in the Sept. They were pretty fun: Jared, Amber, and Molly. Galliard, Ahroun, and Ragabash, respectively. We went on a Rite of Passage together, pretty soon after, to deal with a pack of Wyrm creatures that had moved in on the Sept recently. Between the four of us, we decimated the things, and emerged victorious, if a little wounded. Shortly thereafter, we created our own pack, under Stag. Ah, Victory was a good pack... We learned much about fighting and thriving, about being Garou and what that entailed. I ah...I wasn't always the best student. I had a temper on me, and I fought my elders' decisions sometimes. Like most Fianna I had many a beating as a Cliath, but I turned out okay. As a pack, we sought out Wyrm things and killed them, and once we even helped a Fae -- a Satyr, by the looks of 'im. We did pretty well for ourselves, and once I got the stupid beaten out of me, I think I made a pretty good Galliard. Gaia, that was years ago. I've killed many Spirals, sang many songs, served as Guardian, and many things, in my time. About eight months after I took the rank of Cliath, I challenged for Fostern. I witnessed a grave battle in the Umbra, and many things happened at once. It was hard to keep track of everything that went down, and even after the battle was over and I was the lone man standing, I could not focus on the events. It took three days and three nights of meditation and focus before I could recall the battle. I proceeded to tell the story to my Sept, and though it started shaky and confusing, I soon weaved it into a fascinating tale. I made my challenge. That was many years ago. Now my pack has split, as our ideas have changed. I have kept mainly to myself, serving as Guardian and raising prey animals for the cubs to catch. I have learned how to sing my praises to Gaia, and speak to the spirits in song. I have taught cubs and Cliath, and I have learned the beauty of the Umbra and of oneness with Gaia. My Sept has told me to seek out this new place, Crystal Springs. They have lost many and request recruits, so now I go to take my teaching there. Now I have told you all my story and all my secrets, little Magpie. Will you show me the way to Crystal Springs? ;Personality :Calum is a generally jovial man, passionate and love-drunk. He worships the Spirits and Gaia as his very real Gods, and takes the same fervor in that as a zealot. He does, at least, have the sight to see that his ways are not everybody's ways. On the other hand, he will get very, very angry if he sees someone disrespecting the spirits, or breaking the Litany. He despises metis, and thinks fairly highly of himself and his stories and songs, and almost has the record to match his lofty expectations :His goals in life are to reach the ultimate lasting glory, and posthumously be recognized as a legend among Garou, and thus he takes his job very seriously. He is a hard-working man, with a twist towards the gentle when it comes to harming others in Rage Play List: * Stuff goes here * Logs: Later~ Sheet Stats of Note ;Linguistics :He has learned to read and write glyphs as a language. ;True Faith :He has true faith in Gaia and the forces that hold this universe together, and that they will carry him through anything. ;Overconfidence :He also has a lot of faith in himself -- possibly disproportionate to his actual abilities. He seeks honor because he feels he deserves it, but he is still pretty young. ;Mystical Prohibition :He has taken a vow to never eat or wear anything that hasn't been ritually prepared. If he doesn't do so, his Faith will be shaken, thinking that Gaia will forsake him for his folly, so he loses his Faith bonus until he has undergone a month of rigorously weaving ritual into his life, as an apology to Gaia. If he fails to do this within three months, he loses his True Faith permanently until some miraculous event restores it. Recent Happenings Category:Past PCs